Treatment of a patient with renal insufficiency is typically carried out according to a treatment plan created by a prescriber, such as a physician, based on certain therapeutic objectives. The treatment plan may comprise a schedule of treatment sessions and specific settings for each scheduled treatment session. The treatment plan typically also includes dietary advice, medications, frequency of blood samples for follow-up etc.
Treatment of renal insufficiency typically takes place in individual treatment sessions. One session may have duration between 1 and 12 hours.
Certain conditions may effect the actual execution of the treatment plan and the resulting treatment. One condition may be related to modifications of the treatment settings according to the wish of the patient. Such a modification may typically be the extension or shortening of duration of the treatment session. Another condition may be related to changes due to clinical conditions such as limited achievable blood flow, unexpectedly high weight gain, technical failure or a hypotensive episode. A further condition may be related to the actual result of a preceding treatment session.
A number of dialysis devices are known (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,326,476) in which the treatment parameters (duration, flow rate, etc.) are programmed by a prescriber such as a physician or a technician.
There are also devices (see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,788,851) which are designed to allow a patient, or even a member of the patient's family assisting the patient, to interact with the programming of the treatment. In such devices, the interaction between patient and device is effected via an interface, for example implemented on a touch screen.
However, the devices provided with a patient interface, such as are described in the prior art, are not programmed in such a way as to define therapeutic or clinical objectives to be achieved, for example a predefined creatinine clearance value, a given dose defined as a Kt/V ratio where K=clearance of urea (ml/min), t=time on dialysis (min), V=volume of urea distribution in the body (ml), an individualized water removal target, a sodium balance.
Moreover, if treatment settings are modified by the patient, the devices of the prior art are limited to verifying the desired modification.
There is therefore a need to provide a dialysis device and a method where certain data inputs e.g. in the form of treatment session settings, results in at least one suggested treatment option securing that the therapeutic objectives initially fixed by the prescriber are achieved.